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Monday, August 27, 2012

Quilted Nail Art

I absolutely love Chanel quilted bags, which was why I wanted to create a nail art inspired by the quilt design. I didn't go for the classic black, just because I thought it would be more fun with color. At first, I tried to do it with various different colours, but it didn't turn out too well. Out of all them, purple looked the best to me so I took the rest of the colours off and did a purple quilted design instead. My goal of this design was to try to make it look 3D by adding the shading. I think it turned out quite well and on top of that it's super easy to do!

Keep reading to check out my step to step guide on how I achieved this!

Materials

Darker Purple Polish

Julep "Charlotte"

Light Purple Polish

OPI "Do you Lilac it?"

Black Polish

OPI "Black Onyx"

White Polish

American Apparel Lacquer "T-shirt"

Nail Art Brush/Striper

Purple Microbeads - optional

Toothpick

Topcoat

Instructions

Paint your nail with the lighter purple. Using a nail art striper and a darker shade purple, create large criss cross pattern on your nails. The smaller the criss cross, the more work that is involved.

Create a slightly darker purple by mixing black with the darker purple. Paint along the "V" of the squares, this will represent the lowlight and shadows

Mix the lighter shade of purple with the darker shade of purple. Paint it slightly above the dark V. This will create the mid ones.

Mix the lighter shade of purple with white and paint the top V to create the highlight.

Use a topcoat and apply about 2 coats. This will melt and blend the colours together to make it appear more smoothly. Next with black polish, create very fine black lines. They do not have to be a solid black line. Allow the black lines to slightly disconnect, it adds to the 3D element of this nail design.

Optional: Pour out a small amount of micro beads. Paint your nails with another coat of top coat. While it's still wet, use a toothpick swiped with topcoat to pick up each individual bead and place it on the intersections of the lines.

Samantha's Mixing Tip: Place a drop of whatever colours you need to mix with. Use the striper brush to drag colours together and mix. This will give you a little bit more control than mixing two globs of polishes together.